Setting up a TCPIP Network Printer on eComStation

Contents

Introduction

I have a small network environment at home and I'm sharing a printer with my kids that are on a Windows machine. The only problem is if my kids want to print, they have to start up my computer, since the printer is directly connected to it. After some time of that, I decided to setup the printer as a network resource with its own dedicated server.

The print server

I found a small Ethernet-to-USB print server box from the IOGear company. This box has one ethernet port that plugs into the router and one USB plug that goes to the printer. If you plan to buy one of these print servers, just be sure that it support "lpr" connection. Depending on the default configuration of your device, it will have a fix address (192.168.0.100) or get its address through DHCP from your router. In the second case, you can check the address given to your print server by looking at the corresponding page of your router status - usually from your web navigator.

When you know the IP address of your print server, connect to your device. First thing to setup is to get your print server a fix address.

[Image:DHCP_OFF.jpg]

Go to the TCP/IP configuration and set the DHCP off if it is not already, and specify an address that will fit your router's range. The Gateway should be your router's address. Also, take note (you can also change it) of the "Device Name" of your print server, you'll need it when you'll setup the lpr port connection. Since you're there you can change the password to access the configuration of your print server.

[Image:DeviceName.jpg]

Save everything (a reset of the print server box might be necessary) and let's go to the eCS installation part.

LPR Port setup

You need to start a LPR service to connect to your print server. Do yourself a favor and get the nice program TCPConfig to configure your TCP/IP parameters. After installing and executing it, you'll have this window (with nice color tabs).

[Image:TCPConfig.jpg]

Click on the "Printer" tab and enter the IP address of your print server and the "Device Name" as the name of the printer. Those should exactly match the ones that you set before in your print server box.

[Image:PrinterTab.jpg]

Those parameters will be put in your config.sys file as (for this example):

SET LPR_SERVER=192.168.0.110
SET LPR_PRINTER=Canon-MP500

For those parameters to be operational, you'll need to reboot your system but before doing that, click on the "Autostart" tab and choose the "Servers" tab. Select the "LPRPORTD" server and check the box "Start service automatically" with one of the "Options" that you wish. Click "OK", close the program saving everything and reboot. After rebooting, you should have the LPRPORTD service started. Looking at your tasks should be a LPRPORTD.EXE program running. This is the daemon for your print server.

[Image:LPRPortD.jpg]

Creating the Printer Object

Now, you'll need to create an object for the printer connected to the print server. Open the "Templates" object and drag the "Printer" object on the desktop.(NOTE: *NOT* the "Network Printer" object that serves LAN Printers served over NetBios for Peer Networks).

[Image:Printer.jpg]

Choose a name for your printer. If the printer driver isn't in the list of the default printer driver, click the "Install new printer driver..." button and choose the appropriate driver for your printer. Then choose the "\PIPE\LPD0" as the output port. If you wish, you can right-click on the "\PIPE\LPD0" icon and select "Properties" to check that your LPR port was configured correctly. When everything seems alright, click on the "Create" button and your printer should be ready to use. Et voilà!